Monday, September 14, 2015

With the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is hard not to be excited about superheroes, but in all honesty; I've always been a geek for superheroes. If use the way back button we can all remember a time when superheros were the fodder of Saturday morning cartoons and later the introduction of the Marvel Superheros RPG. Unfortunately this was not a great system. This was an RPG that suffered mainly because it had to deal with everything from the weakest to the infinite and mechanically that is a beast especially when trying to play the game...I mean what do you do if a player character can run 50 miles in one turn or use a laser to cut a building in half? Even when you played a rather weak-sided set of heroes there was the issue of frustrated players because it was so difficult to increase a power or to adapt a power to a new use. Though my and my Nerdherd friends tried many times to make a go of it, but never made it very far...well super speed up to today and we have matured, are more learned, and have tons of superhero stuff as fodder. Add to that the universe of other middle-aged geeks who were in a similar situation, but now have the internet to share everything they have done and boom updated and hopefully workable Marvel campaign setting.

Jupiter City

My very good friend, Rob McDonald, has been hard at work building the Marvel campaign setting when he takes time away from The Fall of the House of Usher. We will be based in a place called Jupiter City in the Pacific Northwest. This started as the dream child of a well-known architect and the heart of the old city has a retro-futuristic design to it. This has since been eclipsed by all of the other modern parts of the city. I'll check with Rob to see if I can release more of his materials on here for people to read and be inspired.

S.E.n.T.R.I

S.E.n.T.R.I unit

Our home is protected by a sub-unit of S.H.I.E.L.D, called S.E.n.T.R.I. This unit is responsible for managing all of the superheroes in and around Jupiter City as well maintaining intelligence on all of the nefarious villains. As with all good police units, S.E.n.T.R.I needs some police, especially advanced looking tactical units. To fill this need, I quickly combed through the Reaper BONESKickstarter sets and starting identifying and pulling figures.

Transportation is always a priority. I was out at RiteAid getting a couple of things and noticed a rack of cars. The vehicles looked to be pretty close to scale, but of course I didn't have a miniature in my pocket and they weren't labeled with the scale information. I looked up the company online and found out that these vehicles are in 1:39 scale, so not too far off the mark. Also the cost was pretty appealing at $4.99 each it was a minor investment.

Vehicles with models for scale

I picked up a couple of these Chevy Suburbans as a test. The picture here shows that they are pretty close to the right scale. Would be a little better at 1:43, but this will work. The close figure is Torch McHough sitting on top of a Tectonic Studios Base Crown (review), but without the base that will also be added. The far figure is my Wasteland Hulk. You can see that these figures are not at full height and both are a bit squatted, so the scale works rather well. Also since the Marvel campaign is a role playing game and not a skirmish/wargame, everything is for representative purposes only so all of this works well. This will also work for future use in any This Is Not A Test games, though perhaps not if used with other O-scale terrain.

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